Hawks finish their mission

Beat Flyers to realize Cup dreams

The Blackhawks had gone 49 years without winning the Stanley Cup. The goal that ended their drought Wednesday was in the net quicker than most eyes could see.

Patrick Kane saw it and realized what it would mean: that his life would never be the same again because he will from now on be known as a Stanley Cup champion.

Kane's shot from deep on the left side slid under Flyers goaltender Michael Leighton, crossed the goal line four minutes and six seconds into overtime to give the Hawks a 4-3 victory and end the Cup final in six games, but for a few seconds he alone was celebrating.

While fans watched in puzzled silence and wondered if the goal would be allowed Kane was shouting to the heavens &#8212; to the rafters of the Wachovia Center, anyway &#8212; before the goal was posted on the scoreboard and league officials began pouring onto the ice to stage the Hawks' victory ceremony.

"I knew it right away," he said. "It was stuck behind the meshing there."

He paused to say hello to his family before being overcome by the wonder of it all.

"What a feeling. I can't believe it," he said. "It's unbelievable. We just won the Stanley Cup."

That they did.

"I don't have to dream about this anymore. It's a reality," said defenseman Brian Campbell, who passed to Kane for the Cup-winning goal.

They did not win it easily. The Flyers, so resilient all season, so strong in mind and body in overcoming an 0-3 deficit against Boston in the second round, pushed them nearly to the limit again by pulling even at 3-3 with 3:59 left in the third period.

They won not because their goaltending was that much better or their offense that much deeper.

They won because they were quicker and better at adjusting to what was being thrown at them and because Coach Joel Quenneville broke up his top line of Kane, Jonathan Toews and Dustin Byfuglien before Game 5 and grafted each onto a different line.

Quenneville had sat next to Hall of Fame coach Scotty Bowman, father of Hawks general manager Stan Bowman and a team advisor, on the flight home from Philadelphia after the Hawks had lost Game 4. He asked Bowman and other staff members to write some suggestions for new lines on slips of paper for him to look at.

From those suggestions came the changes that swayed the series in the Hawks' favor and sent them onto the ice to exult with each other and their families while the few hundred Hawks fans in the stands roared their approval. A few churlish Flyer fans threw their orange rally towels onto the ice and booed Commissioner Gary Bettman when he came out to present the Cup to Toews but if that's the worst of it, that's not bad.

Quenneville said he thought the turning point of the Cup final arrived before he reconfigured his lines.

"I thought losing Game 3 in overtime got our attention. And Game 4 we gave up some uncharacteristic goals," he said. "Guys battled back. I thought the last two games were the two best games of the whole playoffs."

Quenneville's changes had a significant ripple effect because even workhorse defenseman Chris Pronger couldn't stay on the ice and continue to bang and whack and hack all three into submission if they were on separate lines.

Kane, playing with Patrick Sharp and Andrew Ladd, was better able to use his speed and shifty moves. Byfuglien, on the wing with Kris Versteeg and center Dave Bolland, rediscovered the brawn and aggressiveness that had made him the Hawks' playoff hero in previous rounds. He scored his first goal of the Cup final in the Hawks' 7-4 victory in Game 5 and scored their first goal off a rebound Wednesday.

Toews, centering for Tomas Kopecky and Marian Hossa, did not go on a scoring spree, but he didn't have to. He remained his steady, serious self, winning 58 percent of his faceoffs in Game 5 and 64 percent in Game 6, a leader by example if not by point totals, and a worthy winner of the Conn Smythe trophy as the most valuable player in the playoffs.

Not a bad few months for Toews, 22, who within a few months has won an Olympic gold medal with Team Canada and became the second-youngest captain ever to win the Cup.

"Jonathan Toews is a special human being," Quenneville said. "A young kid, had one of those years. Big player in the Olympics. Big player for us in the playoffs. The bigger the setting, the bigger the game, the bigger he seems to rise to that challenge and that occasion."

Byfuglien said he congratulated Pronger during the traditional post-series handshake line. "I told him, 'Great job way to battle,'" Byfuglien said. "He had a great series."

But the Hawks had an even greater series. Their long wait has ended, all in the blink of an eye.